GOSELINI, Giuliano. Dichiaratione di alcuni componimenti.

Quarto (230 x 160 mm.), [4], 298, [4] leaves. Large paper copy without the printer's device on title-page. Contemporary Venetian red morocco gilt over woodden boards, roll-tooled borders, the central panel decorated in gilt with leafy tools to centre-and-corner design, the ground of the centre and corners filled with gold dots, central medallion with gilt inscription: Ioann. Francisco Donato (front cover) and dated MDLXXV (back cover), gilt edges. Professionaly rebecked but a very fine copy from the library of Francesco Donato, a member of the famous Venetian family.

The scarce first edition of Goselini's commentaries of his own poetic work, Rime, published the year prior. Giuliano Goselini (1525-1587) was an Italian intellectual and poet, as well as a private secretary for Ferrante Gonzaga, the viceroy of Sicily and governor of the Duchy of Milan. Living in Milan, Goselini became acquainted with other literati connected to the court, such as Domenico Venier, Annibal Caro, and Giovanni Battista Amalte, also becoming a member of the local Accademia dei Fenici. His first major poetic work was published in 1572, the Rime, as a collection of 203 sonnets - mostly poems on love, encomiastic or funerary - famous with his contemporaries but subsequently neglected and scarcely studied. Nevertheless, his work received four reprints, the first of which was published in 1573 accompanied by the Dichiaratione. This ‘Declaration' aimed at providing a literary analysis of his own poetry, allowing for the expression of personal interpretations and extended philosophical readings. A second purpose of this work is to clarify certain poems and verses, allowing to expand on their meaning and origin. Through the Dichiaratione, Goselini goes as far as linking himself with the wider Renaissance literary culture, by establishing connections between his own work and classical literature, in particular with Dante, Petrarch and Pontano.

In the second part of the sixteenth century, the self-commentary or declaration became a common and sought after literary genre, allowing for a larger degree of self-expression and explanation on the part of authors. Goselini himself recognises, in the introductory dedication to Vespasiano Gonzaga published in the Dichiaratione, that “when I had printed those rhymes [...] it seemed to some that many of those compositions needed some declaration”. The Declaration is a text of great importance and originality in the context of Renaissance literary culture, despite having been overlooked by scholars in the past.

Rare outside of Italy: Worldcat lists only 4 copies in the US and only one in the UK.

USTC 833759; Edit16 CNCE 21473; BMSTC Italian 309; Graesse, III, 121; Gamba, 1438; Armando Maggi, Il comento al ‘Sé Oscuro': La ‘Dichiarazione' di Giuliano Goselini e la fine del sapere Rinascimentale, 2003.